Eve Online - Worth the Effort?

Is Eve Online worth spending hours to hone my skills? I really like space combat games but have rarely had the patience or interest for MMORPG games.

Is Eve Online fairly easy to master? I'd like to be able to get into something that I can play a few hours at a time a few days a week. I probably can't be real consistent and play at set hours as my life won't allow that. But would still like to get involved in an interesting RPG sci-fi type game.

 

Its a bit overwhealming at first, you get into it quickly, just dont try to play it on a crappy machine.

Theres a two week trial period you can go for, completly free, i did it, enjoyed it but i dunno... its a good game its just i really dont have the time for it.

 

I did the trial and couldn't justify paying a monthly fee for the game. The idea is good, but I feel that a point-and-click system for a space combat game defeats the purpose. I'd just as soon stick with Freelancer.

 

Without a doubt the most innovative MMO out there. I personally love how PVP means something in Eve, after all if you lose your ship it's gone forever. Eve is the only MMO I've played where PVP actually got my heart racing. Training for skills can be tedious, but trust me when I say you don't need many skillpoints to be an avid pvper.

 

well the eve skill system is different from any other MMO out there in that you don't get skill points by killing something. you gain skill points by just selecting a skill to train, and it trains that skill weather your in the game or not. By that I mean when you close out the game at night and go to bed you are still training that skill. When I first tried EVE I used the 2 week free pass and after that didn't go back for a few months. At the time they had a real steep learning curve. however after 2 months I went back and tried the 2 week trial again(on a diffrent email addy) and I was able to pick up right where I left off because even though it was a lot to learn, it wasn't mind blowing. I skipped thorough most of the training session, went out and found a corp to join. once I was in a corp they showed me everything I didn't learn in the training session and answered all of my questions.

The skill training and the Age group is the biggest difference between EVE and most other MMO's. EVE requires you to be thoughtful and have a general plan in what you do. Like Concepticle said, once you loose something its gone forever. That keeps a lot of younger players away because they want an "easy" game that doesn't require much thought in fighting and they want to powerlevel, which is simply not possible in EVE. I read a few months ago that the average player age in EVE is 27. I believe it because most of the people I have met are level headed and respectful.

If you have any more questions then please ask away here or in game(eve mail Fist1 as thats my main character)

All in all EVE is what Freelancer should have been, minus the FPS combat view.

 

No, Eve is difficult to master. It's got a bit of a learning curve, and there's always more to learn and figure out and experiment with. (which, on the whole, isn't a bad thing. All in all, I've played for a year or so, and there's still a lot of stuff I'm clueless about)
From what you say, it sounds like it could be a good match though. It's really well suited for people who just play a few hours from time to time, especially because of the skill system. I still play it in roughly the same way. Log in every once in a while to set my character to train a new skill, and otherwise just play a few hours when I feel like it and have time.
I can probably give out 14-day trials if you want to give it a try. (Or you might be able to sign up for one directly from their website)

How exactly would you expect to fly a 3+ km long spaceship? Expect it to do barrel rolls? Loops?
I think point and click makes good sense when you consider the scale of the game. We're talking star destroyers rather than tie fighters here, after all.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I may give it a shot. It sounds quite interesting but even hate to spend a lot of time with it over two weeks to find out it's not for me, or feel like I need to spend the $15/month to keep playing.

 

Press r twice...
No, I don't expect any of the capital-type class ships to do that. But those aren't the only type of ships available, and they aren't the ones you start out with. I personally found the control system very dull.

 

I played it for a year and a half. It is very adictive but it eats your life if you're not careful.

I found the point and click navigation a hinderance when doing pvp in frigates but it was spot on for long range Tyrant chaining in an Apoc or complexes in a Raven.

My main niggle with Eve was it took a long time to go anywhere, it would take half a day to get out to my 0.0 hunting grounds if I'd been back to the terrifying world of 1.0 empire space. Instead of Player Owned Stations I would have much preferred to have seen Player Owned Jumpgates! A minor niggle was some corps insist on using Teamspeak, personally I liked the text only communication as it created a better illusion of the ingame world rather than hearing a bunch of kids trying to out smacktalk each other lol

I'm still occasionally in touch with a friend on Eve he's been playing it since it launched and he's still well and truly hooked on it. He's got my old character now and she's still going strong, whicn in a weird way was nice to know. Oh and yes the age range in Eve is one of the widest I've come across in an MMORPG.

I stopped playing it because it was turning into a job! I was jointly running 200members+ corp, going on Alliance ops, mining sessions in 0.0 to fund new recruits, refining stacks of junk loot & ore. Half the time I just ended up using it as an expensive chat program. All that left little time to do the fun things in the game which for me were the complexes and chaining Tyrants (I was crap at PVP )

Top game though.. I have thought about installing it again but I just don't have the time at the moment.

 

It's a great game if you get into a good corporation. I heard that statement many times before but I paid it no heed. The game sucks if you play solo. Yes, there are a lot of things that you can do by yourself, but having a group of people to go on missions or run complexes together is great...it makes you feel like you are a part of somethings.

When comparing it to other fun games like WoW, the player base is usually older and more mature. The more advanced portions of the game require time and thinking; probably a lot more time as Sasanac pointed out. I enjoy it because there is so much to do depending on your mood or style.

Again, if you only plan on soloing, just play it on a free trial and be done with it. Corporations do make all the difference.

 

Been playing it for about 3 years off and on. The skill train system is quite unique and makes many new players feel like they will never be able to compete, but this isn't really the case. It does not take very long to become proficient in almost any skill set. It only takes awhile if you decide to go super focused into a couple high rank level 5 skills that take a month each to train.

 

I'm mostly playing with 3-4 of my friends, and we just made our own small corporation. That works out pretty well too. Of course it means we can't really do much in 0.0 space, but there's still plenty of fun to be had. And it means we don't have an obligation to help support or fund a huge 200-member corporation, or show up for their battles and whatnot.

 

There have already been a lot of posts on here, but yah.

I've been playing eve for 2.5 months. Its a great game. VERY much so overwhelming for about the first week of playing, but theres so much you can do, and so much you can specialize in. Theres so many different ways you can make money (isk in game), and when you get into lower security space, there are a plethora of things you can do to kill time, kill people, or be killed by people (had to put that one in). I think its an extremely exciting game.

The skill learning process can be quite a bit tedious. Its not so bad that it really take away from the game tho. At first you will just want to get in the biggest, best ship possible, but really in this game, thats about the absolute worst thing you can do. Without going into too much detail ill leave it at that.

This game is awesome with a group of people playing with you. At the same time I started this game, 8 or 9 other people from my clan also started playing Eve. Now that we all have some skills trained, we occasionally will do a low sec raid together, and that gets pretty intense.

Overall, give it a shot. If you dont like it, you dont like it. If you do, send me a PM and I'll extend an offer to you to our corporation so you can TRULY experience EVE.


Poseign

 

So I take it you will need scheduled times to be online at the same times? I may not be able to make that commitment. I think I may just give it a shot and see where it takes me.

 

The problem with EVE is that skills take ages to research - and everyone says you basically MUST TRAIN the "learning" skills to max before you can actually start learning the useful skills...

I recall having to train a particular skill (to use a more powerful type of turret or laser or something) for approx. 2 days. The training does occur while you're offline, but you need to monitor your training - if you do not choose a different skill after the next rank is reached, then you risk sinking extra time into a skill you might not even need yet.

Prerequisites are particularly harsh. To use a new item, you usually need 2 or 3 skill ranks. At noob levels, you can learn to use a semi-ok weapon or ship in a few weeks of playing (aka. Trial period). Learning the proper pre-reqs for flying a proper cargo ship or attack vessel (and weapons required on it) can take months.

The only part of EVE I really enjoyed was the market system - it was tremendously powerful.

 

just reading all these posts is in some ways making me miss Eve lol.. hmm you might see me on the demo any day!

.. having said that! there's nothing more frustrating than knowing your latest skill training has finished but you're not able to get you your pc to start off the next one! you start seeing days change into skill training times and not 24hours in the day!

to get a char that is good at learning skills you need all the wrong skills to be a good pilot, this is very frustrating! but... with Eve you have to be patient, you'll find a lot of people train like mad to get into a battleship (BS) asap but then can't fit it with any sensible kit so they loose their BS.. I found that (after loosing a few ships) the actual ship skill is the last thing you should train up, the extra skills such as navigation, gunnery, turrets, sharp shooter, after burners etc etc (they're just the ones I can remember off the top of my head there are stacks more than that) are the priority, once you're proficient in them then get the ship!

I miss the camaraderie on Eve it's second to none... get in a good corp and you'll have a great time. Jalf I totally agree with you, that is exactly how the corp I ran with my mate started! it just kinda got out of hand lol I think it's still going too..

now where's that trial download.... (just don't tell my fiance!!!)

oh yeah, nearly forgot... each account can have 3 chars so you're not just stuck with one char in one corp but do remember that you can only train up skills on one char at a time.